


Three Times Draco Malfoy Cried in Front of that Dimwit Potter, I Mean, Was He Trying to Comfort Him or Something?

by imochan



Series: Three Times Prompt Challenge (Tumblr) [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alcohol, Grieving, Illness, M/M, draco malfoy is a tiny angry dandelion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-13
Updated: 2015-02-13
Packaged: 2018-03-12 05:29:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3345314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imochan/pseuds/imochan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/users/reserve">reserve</a>, who asked for: "Three times Draco Malfoy cried in front of that dimwit Potter, I mean honestly, was he trying to comfort Draco or something? The hand holding was awful," in the "Three Times" prompt challenge on Tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Times Draco Malfoy Cried in Front of that Dimwit Potter, I Mean, Was He Trying to Comfort Him or Something?

**1.**

The first time it happens (after that time it already happened, once before, of course), he’s flooed into work ninety-seven minutes late because his father woke them up with his screaming in the middle of the night, and when he and his mother, clutching dressing-robes closed with shaking hands, breath like startled fog in the cold damp air, found him barefoot, half-naked, and ripping shreds along his forearm and the soles of his feet with his own wand in the dungeons of the Manor, there was too much blood to be dealt with then and there, but of course it took hours to arrange a private wing at Mungo’s with all of their connections gone and Ministry solvency meaning so little, so he is late to work, he is exhausted, he is a _Malfoy_ , he is a _survivor_ , but he is also just keeping up appearances of a wealth and status long since gone, he is also just a fucking junior barrister in the Department of Legal Paperwork, and his father (his _father_ ) has had some sort of nervous fit, and he can’t stop _shaking_.

“Right,” he says, to his empty office, and tries to think about shedding his coat and putting down his briefcase.

( _There was so much blood_ , he thinks, instead.)

“Fuck,” he whispers, and tries to think about maybe putting down his briefcase and going to get a cup of coffee, instead.

( _His father’s blood, and he wouldn’t stop screaming, like something had_ _got him by the throat -- like something had its claws in his heart_ , he thinks, instead.)

“ _Fuck_ ,” he hisses, dropping his briefcase to the floor and grabbing onto the edge of his desk, because his knees seemed to have given up completely. He squeezes his eyes shut against the tight, hysterical, claustrophobic feeling, but he knows it’s already too late, and he’s gasping for air, he can’t _breathe_ , his eyes are stinging, and his heart is about to escape through his throat, it’s all so –

He grabs the nearest object with a jittering, spasming hand, and just _throws_ it. It (a file folder) hits the wall behind him with a satisfying _thwack_ and slides heavily to the floor, and it feels so _good_ that he grabs the next thing his hand finds (paperweight, blue, shaped like a swan) and _hurls_ it again, hoping for the sound of shattering glass.

There is, instead, a disappointing thud, the rustle of cloth, and the sound of someone sucking in a breath.

“Ow! What th -- ” comes a voice, from behind him.

 _Fuck_ , thinks Draco, gasping, his back to the door, his hands still shaking at his sides, because _of course_ the universe is one gigantic cosmic joke – of course.

“Malfoy, what -- ”

“This is a _bad time_ ,” he manages, panting through clenched teeth.

“Er,” says Potter.

“ _Did you not hear me?_ ” he rounds on Potter, who does – to his credit – look visibly and authentically stunned (although, to be fair, he has just been grazed with a fairly heavy desk ornament).

“All right, all right -- ” Potter lifts both hands, palms out, taking a step back. “Jesus, Malfoy, are you -- ”

“If you ask after my health, I will actually murder you,” he gasps. “I have _three other paperweights_.”

“Oi,” says Potter, lowering his hands slightly. “Come on.”

“ _What_.”

“It’s just a new case,” says Potter, evenly, and Draco feels distinctly as if he is being treated like a rabid dog. (He may or may not feel his lip curl in a growl.) “We wanted some paper put through, that’s all. I’ll come back later, all right?”

“Don’t you have a _Weasley_ to run your errands for you?”

“I’m leaving,” says Potter, slowly. “I’m definitely leaving. You can stop insulting everyone now.”

“Fuck. _Off_ ,” Draco spits, feeling the tight prickles of heat start to gather again behind his eyes.

“Absolutely,” says Potter, and flees.

 

**2.**

The second time, he’s gone to meet his mother at Mungo’s in the middle of the afternoon and they’ve had the Healer tell them in no uncertain terms that his father is not getting well, that he will _never_ get well, that he is getting _worse_.

There were several long discussions involving things Draco absolutely wanted nothing to do with, and one point Mother took out her handkerchief and pressed it to her mouth and nose with a precise and delicate series of pats (which Draco knew meant she was at her wits’ end), and throughout it all, Lucius Malfoy, patriarch of the noblest of the Sacred Twenty-Eight, sat in a chair in a shaft of sunlight, and drooled down his chin.

 _Why don’t you come home for tea, darling_ , said his mother, after.

 _I’ve got work,_ he’d said. (He had wanted tea, but he also had wanted very badly to vomit in the nearest bin.)

 _Well_ , she’d demurred, _do try and come home for supper, then,_ and she’d offered up her cheek for a kiss.

And as soon as he steps into the floo, he makes a head-down beeline for the men’s toilets on the fourth floor, in the hallway near the back entrance to the Beasts Wing of Regulation and Control, because he knows they have been partially under renovation for the last week, due to a disgruntled ex-employee (Vampire, fucking his assistant, skimming from the February charity drive, according to one goblin and three mouthy witches in the breakroom) who was trying to hex the taps to run blood instead of water, and instead only managed to get the mirrors to be particularly nasty and judgmental.

He slams the door behind him (luck offering him an empty row of stalls), and immediately tugs at the knot in his tie, managing to get one hand braced on the edge of a sink before it all comes rolling in, and he’s stuck here, in a horrible, desperate, horrifically ironic moment of miserable _déja-vù_ , because now it’s the second time in his life he’s ended up gulping and breathless and shaking, his face wet and his spine weak, in the fucking loo.

He’s just about managed to pull himself together enough to start to reach forward and get the water running to splash a little on his face, when he hears the door swing open, and behind him in the mirror, is the literal worst thing in the world that could have possibly happened next.

“Fuck, _”_ says Potter, eloquently.

“Oh, come _on_ ,” Draco snaps, and whirls, throwing a bar of soap shaped like a unicorn at Potter’s head.

Of course -- just when launching a projectile at Potter’s face was starting to make him feel a bit better -- one of the mirrors manages to spoil the moment by calling out: “You throw like a bloody girl!”

\--

Later, when he emerges with his face dried, his cuffs turned back down, crisply, to his wrists, and his chin lifted in defiance and denial, Potter is _waiting_ in the corridor outside, absently rubbing a red, soap-sized lump on his forehead.  

“What,” says Draco.

Potter just raises his eyebrows.

“ _What_ ,” he says again, feeling vaguely hysterical.

“You done?” says Potter, finally, crossing his arms.

“Oh, _fuck off,_ you -- ”

“I _mean_ ,” says Potter. “We need your help with the Korodova case? Your office won’t let us see the files unless you sign them over, remember?”

“Oh,” says Draco. “Right.”

“Do you have them?”

“In my office,” says Draco.

“Great,” says Potter, pushing off from the wall and hooking his thumb in a vague _shall we?_ gesture.

“Now?”

“Are you busy?”

“Maybe,” he growls, still feeling quite pinched in the throat.

“You’re not busy,” sighs Potter.

“I might be,” he says, peevish.

“Are you at least done throwing things at my head?” says Potter, pointedly.

“ _No_ ,” he snaps, and starts down the corridor.

“Brilliant,” mutters Potter.

“Your timing is abysmal,” he says, over his shoulder.

“Yep,” agrees Potter, following along behind, and he sounds almost _cheerful_ about it.

 

 

 **3.**  

The third time, he is drunk, and his father is dead.

His father is dead, buried under the granite of the family plot in the increasingly desiccated garden of the Manor in Wiltshire yesterday evening, him and his mother standing in the sharp mist, Narcissa’s long, white, and aging fingers clutched at his sleeve like a vice, and Draco trying desperately not to think about what kind of ghost Lucius Malfoy the Second would be, should things go pear-shaped and his father decide from the afterlife that he might have some sort of unfinished business.

And now it is just after midnight, and he is sitting at his desk in his darkened office, steadily working his way through a bottle of Ogden’s and glaring intermittently at the heavy packet of parchment documents by his elbow that he knows all too well are emblazoned, inside, with the gold-inked words _Herein Lies The Last Will and Testament of_ \--

There is the sound of footsteps – slow, measured, a little meandering, distant at first and then drawing closer – and then someone tall, in dark Auror robes and dirty trainers ambles past his open door. Draco catches a flash of distressingly familiar spectacles as they pass, pause, and then back up very deliberately into where the light of the corridor spills into his office.

“Oh,” says Potter, from his doorway.

Draco glares at him. “Go away, Potter.” (He means it to sound blasé, authoritative, but it comes out sort of sloppy and muddled up, and so he ends up glaring at his glass of whiskey instead.)

There is a long pause, and then Potter sighs, and doesn’t look like he’s prepared to do anything remotely like going away.

“I _said --_ ”

“Shut up, Malfoy,” Potter sighs again, and steps inside.

Draco makes his most eloquent _what the actual living fuck_ gesture (as much as possible with three glasses of whiskey inside him and a half-full one still in his hand).

“Late night, then,” says Potter, nodding his chin at the bottle.

Draco flips him off and knocks back the rest of his drink in one motion, which he is vaguely proud of, being certain it’s probably the last coordinated thing he will do for the rest of the night.

Potter just pulls up a chair on the other side of the desk and reaches for the bottle.

“I _beg_ your pardon,” Draco says, drawing himself up, shoulders stiffening.

“Have you got another -- ” Potter swivels slightly in his chair, casting about for something. “I mean, we know you hate people, but only the one glass is a little sad, even for this.”

“Oh, my god, have you literally just been stalking the corridors waiting to find a convenient time to steal my liquor and insult me with no witnesses?” (He’s not slurring. He’s _not_.)

Potter just slides his wand out from where it’s tucked over his ear and points it at one of the glass paperweights, Transfiguring it into a small tumbler with a low mutter. It gives a valiant effort, but ends up having a bit of a wonky bit in the middle and a decidedly green hue.

“Whoop,” says Potter, squinting at it as he tips the bottle up against the edge, pouring himself a generous portion. “Well, that’s no NEWT-level.”

Draco reaches across the desk and snatches the bottle back. “That’s _shoddy work_. You should be fired.”

Potter shrugs as he takes a drink. “They’re not paying me for that.”

“No,” he growls, filling his own glass with extreme concentration (it still manages to spill a little – he’s not _shaking_ ). “Nor are they paying you to sit in my office uninvited and drink all my whiskey.”

“No,” says Potter, falsely solemn. “They are definitely not.”

“What are you even doing here?” he slumps back in his chair; his spine feels like jelly and his head is starting to spin. “Go _home_. Haven’t you got a small ginger wife to fuck clinically on top of all your money and Ministry awards?”

“Okay, look, I’m going to ignore that, for now, because -- ”

“Because _what_ ,” he snaps.

“Because, _look_ ,” says Potter, and at least he has the good manners to look at least vaguely uncomfortable about what he’s about to say. “Look – I have heard about. What happened.”

“Bully for you,” he says. His tongue feels thick, and Potter’s so _stupid_.

“I’m – “ says Potter, frowning into his glass.

“If you say _I’m sorry for your loss,_ I swear to Merlin I’ll –“

Potter’s laugh bursts out of him, eyes snapping up to Draco, a palm slapped halfway over his mouth as if he’s almost embarrassed.

“ _No,_ ” says Potter. “God, no.”

“ _Good_ ,” snaps Draco. “And – _and_ , you don’t get to look so pleased about it, either.”

“Your dad was a _dick,_ Malfoy.”

Draco drops his forehead to his desk and raises his glass in a weak toast. “ _Yes_ ,” he says, to his knees, and then considers what he’s just said and raises his head enough to glare blearily across the desk. “Wait. No. _I don't know_. No, _your_ dad was a dick, Potter.”

Potter raises his eyebrows.

“Shut up,” he says, and puts his face into his hands.

“I literally haven’t said anything,” says Potter, and it sounds like he’s _smiling_. “You’re drunk, though.”

“ _No_ ,” he says.

“Sure,” says Potter.

“I’m _not_ ,” he says, raising his head enough to glare over his knuckles.

“Okay,” says Potter, and pours him another three fingers of Ogden’s.

“ _You’re_ drunk,” he mutters, and snatches the glass back, spilling half of it on his back of his hand and across a the pile of documents marked _Floo Construction – Withleby and Greene_.

“Not yet,” says Potter. “I could be, though. I have had quite a lot of people die on me.”

“That’s different,” he says, sucking whiskey from his fingers, and feeling the itch of a flush start to crawl up his cheeks. “You’re the hero.”

“So?” says Potter, knocking back the rest of his glass and reaching to pour another.

" _So_ ,” he sneers. “Noble deaths. Great causes. Not particularly complicated.”

“What’s complicated?” says Potter, suddenly serious, both elbows on the desk, leaning into the space between them.  “I’m sorry, are you telling me that the _death of Lucius Malfoy_ is _complicated_?”

Draco suddenly feels very, very drunk, and hot behind the eyes.

“Yes,” he says, finally, and it comes out wrong – sort of wobbly and hoarse at the edges.

“Sure,” says Potter, still looking at him. “Right. Sure it is.”

“Wha - ” he swallows. “ _What_.”

“Death’s always complicated,” says Potter, slowly, and raises his glass to his mouth without looking away. “You know, sometimes there isn’t even a body.”

“ _So?_ ” he’s trying to glare, but there’s something wrong with his face, something wrong with his eyes; his cheeks feel too hot and there’s something pinched at the bridge of his nose and his breath won’t come smoothly it keeps hitching somewhere in the back of his throat –

“So,” says Potter, and his eyes are very bright behind those stupid, _stupid_ spectacles. “You’re not special, Malfoy.”

“Shut up -- ”

“You have parents, and they die, and it’s complicated,” says Potter. “And you cry about it just like everyone else.”

“I’m not _crying_ ,” he manages, and wipes angrily at his face with a palm, as if to prove it.

(He is crying. His cheeks are wet. That thing lodged in the back of his throat, hitching his breathing, that’s his _heart_.)

“Right,” says Potter, and he finally looks away.

He realizes, after a little while, after he’s pressed his face into his hands and scrubbed at his face with his fists, and after he’s managed to dig a handkerchief out from his trouser pocket with numb, shaking fingers, that it’s not even really possible to be embarrassed about any of it, since Potter, somehow, seems totally uninterested in anything other than the rest of his glass of Ogden’s, and appears perfectly happy to sit in silence _and not comment at all_ on the fact that his childhood rival is having a very complicated emotional moment not three feet away.

“Well,” says Draco, into the folds of his handkerchief. “I think that might be enough.”

“Hm?” says Potter.

“ _Whiskey_ , Potter,” says Draco, lifting his head to glare. “Enough _whiskey_.”

“Oh,” says Potter. “Yeah. If you like.”

“Take the rest with you,” he says, waving at hand at the bottle to disguise the fact that he’s still sure his face is red and blotched with _whatever that was_. “I imagine I’ll be sick enough tomorrow I won’t want to see it for weeks.”

When he looks up, Potter is frowning at him.

“Take it, Potter,” he rolls his eyes. “And get out.”

“You all right to get home?”

“That’s a very stupid question,” he sniffs. “Of course not.”

“Could do a sober-up for you,” says Potter, shifting in his seat.

“ _No_ ,” Draco cringes, and puts his forehead down onto his desk again in order to stop the room from spinning so violently. “No, _thank_ you. I’ll take the four hours of pissed and restless sleep _before_ the crushing headache, thanks.”

He can positively _hear_ Potter’s smirk. “Suit yourself. Can’t let you floo like that, though.”

“Oh, thank you, _Nursey_ ,” he sneers, and waves his hand blindly towards the far end of the office. “I _do_ have a perfectly good drunkard’s corner, you know.”

The chair creaks as Potter swivels, taking in the overstuffed armchair nestled in next to the coatrack and the teetering bookshelf full of bound books with incredibly dull titles, like _European Wizarding Border Law: 1863-1871,_ and _Torte Torts, Post-1914 French Pie Incident._

“All right,” says Potter, and Draco hears the chair protest again as Potter gets up with a quiet grunt.

“Ta-ta,” sings Draco, morosely, to his knees. “Thanks very much for stopping by and being a horrible specter in the worst moments of my life, as always.”

“What?” laughs Potter.

“Nothing,” says Draco. “Goodnight.”

“Come on,” says Potter, and suddenly – very unexpectedly – his voice is much closer, and there is a soft touch of a hand to Draco’s elbow.

Draco turns his head on the desk and squints up at him, and Potter is standing there by his side with his stupid hair sticking up in all directions, and his stupid mouth quirked in a half-grin, and his stupid hand on Draco’s elbow, sending Draco’s stupid heart into something like _horrible distress_ for _no reason at all_.

“Come on,” says Potter again, and tugs at his elbow. “Let’s get you up and then you can collapse wherever else you like, all right?”

Draco glares at him.

“I’m unarmed,” says Potter, with an infuriating smile.

Draco tries to say _fine_ , but it comes out sort of like _ffngh_ , and when he stands, he only holds onto Potter’s shoulder because the desk very clearly has tried to trip him on the way up. Potter shuffles them across the room, and it’s all a bit too blurry and swimming in emotional exhaustion for Draco to recall, later, how exactly he ended up in the chair without _too_ much of a headache, and without _too much_ of a crick in his neck.

And when he does wake, blearily, sometime around four in the morning, he is alone with several confusing memories and several strange details.

There is a black wool robe draped around his shoulders. He is in his stocking-feet; his shoes are on the ground, neatly lined up, one beside the other, laces tucked away. Someone has transfigured _Torte Torts_ into a lumpy, misshapen, slightly leather-bound pillow, slipped gently between his neck and the back of the chair. There is a fuzzy, whiskey-soaked memory of a hand touching the top of his head. There is a glass of water on the desk, and a note, in a messy, nearly completely illegible hand:

_Well done not throwing anything at me this time._

_PS I took the Ogden’s._

_PPS You said I could don’t come find me and be a dick about it later._

_– HP_

_Well,_ thinks Draco, still wrapped in the borrowed robe, balling up the note and tossing it at the bin with all the grace and accuracy of the supremely hung-over and emotionally compromised.

_Well. There could, apparently, be worse habits than crying in front of Harry Potter._


End file.
